Sandra Pereira, statistician for hire
Statistician for hire
Sandra Pereira will classify and analyze any numerical information you – dear grad student, researcher, university office, or outside firm – bring her, and the first 30 minutes are free of charge.
Pereira is a statistician for hire, and has recently started working for the U of M. Since the 1970s, the Department of Statistics in the Faculty of Science has offered a Statistical Consulting Service (SCS), helping researchers and departments do everything from design experiments and data collection surveys, to developing a data analysis strategy or summarizing survey results.
“The aim is to provide reliable information to the clients and they will apply the knowledge to make decisions – to be conservative or proactive. They give us a ‘noisy’ picture, and we give them a beautiful picture. I love providing accurate, helpful, informative advice for all our clients,” Pereira says.
Pereira earned her undergraduate degree in mathematics at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul, her master’s degree in applied statistics at the University of Brasilia, and her PhD in spatial statistics at the University of Western Australia. She currently receives about three requests a week (but her best estimate is that this article will increase requests by 100 per cent). Many of her requests come from graduate students.
“When we are dealing with graduate level students we are guiding them. We do not solve the problem for them. Our goal is to empower the students to solve the problem themselves,” she says.
If a faculty member or post-doc seeks her service, the guidance is tailored and specific because the researcher often has a specific question, like which parametric or non-parametric model they should use. She can also help with grant applications, confirming the proposed sample sizes and intended calculation methods will work, ensuring the application is as robust as possible from scientific standpoint.
For department seeking to forecast student enrollment or demographics, SCS can help with that too.
“I like how diverse statistics is,” Pereira says. “We can talk to any applied field, in science, commerce, health and arts. If they have quantitative information we can talk. We can help. We can support. And I like how statistics can help guiding people on everyday matters, making simple decisions, like should they bring an umbrella to work that day even if it’s sunny when they look out a window.”
Rates and contact info
Please visit the Statistical Consulting Service (SCS) for rates and charges.
Phone: 204-474-8504
Office 374, Department of Statistics
Machray Hall, Faculty of Science
Mondays to Thursdays from 9:15 am to 2:30 pm
Email: consulting@stats.umanitoba.ca
Research at the University of Manitoba is partially supported by funding from the Government of Canada Research Support Fund.